Roy Spencer

Dr. Roy Spencer, a prominent global warming skeptic, is a principal research scientist for the University of Alabama at Huntsville and the U.S. Science Team Leader for the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer (AMSR-E) on NASA's Aqua satellite.

Bio
Spencer holds M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in meteorology.

Contrarian climate views
Spencer is a climate contrarian who believes that climate change is not human caused and will have minimal impact.

That our climate change is likely natural
At a 2008 talk sponsored by the Kansas Chamber of Commerce, Spencer said, "There's probably a natural reason for global warming. ... We will look back on it as a gigantic false alarm. ... The Earth isn't that sensitive to how much CO2 we put into the atmosphere. ... I think we need to consider the possibility that more carbon dioxide is better than less."

Pacific Decadal Oscillation
To account for warming his favored alternative theory is that it's due to the Pacific Decadal Oscillation. ; yet the PDO "shows no [long-term] trend, and therefore...is not responsible for the trend of global warming".

That near-future climate change won't be severe
Scientifically, the crucial point in Spencer's position is that of climate sensitivity. Spencer suggests in his blog that climate sensitivity may be low, due to mainstream climate scientists underestimating clouds, and he claims that satellite data will support him.

Rebuttal
"Roy Spencer has come up with yet another “silver bullet” to show that climate sensitivity is lower than IPCC estimates. I.e., he fits a simple 1-box climate model to the net flux of heat into the upper 700 m of the ocean, and infers a climate sensitivity of only about 1 °C (2x CO2).  There are several flaws in his methods–inconsistent  initial conditions, failure to use the appropriate data, and failure to account for ocean heating deeper than 700 m.  (He fixed the last one in an update.)  All of these flaws pushed his model to produce a lower climate sensitivity estimate.  When the flaws are corrected, the model estimates climate sensitivities of at least 3 °C, which is the IPCC’s central estimate. ... while Spencer’s latest effort doesn’t really do any damage to the consensus position, it turns out that it does directly contradict the work he promoted in The Great Global Warming Blunder."

That we should delay acting
Asked in December 2008 what his advice was for then-President-Elect Barack Obama, Spencer responded, "He should put off the environmentalists indefinitely. ... Tell them we have to fix the economy first before we can afford unaffordable renewable energy 'solutions.'"

Contribution to the IPCC
Whilst a critic of the {[Integovernmental Panel on Climate Change]] Roy Spencer has also been a contributor. He helped draw up Chapter 7. Physical Climate Processes and Feedbacks of the Third Assessment Report and contributed to Chapter 3: Observed climate variability and change

Opposition to evolution and embrace of "intelligent design"
Spencer has been an active in advocating Intelligent Design over evolution, and he argues that its teaching should be mandatory in schools. Working with the Interfaith Stewardship Alliance, Spencer has been part of an effort to advocate environmental policy that is based on a "Biblical view" rather than science. As a defender of the pseudoscience of "Intelligent Design" creationism, Spencer has asserted that the scientific theory of evolution is really just a kind of religion.

Books
Spencer is the author of least three books downplaying global warming - Climate Confusion (2008), The Great Global Warming Blunder (2010), The Bad Science and Bad Policy of Obama's Global Warming Agenda (2010) - all published by Olin,  Koch, & Bradley-funded Encounter Books, "an editor, publisher and distributor for books related to democratic society which have no traditional means of publication." 

Criticism of "Global Warming Blunder"
Spencer's arguments in The Great Global Warming Blunder were critiqued extensively in a three-part series by Utah geochemist Barry Bickmore, ,.

In the book, Spencer says: "I find it difficult to believe that I am the first researcher to figure out what I describe in this book. Either I am smarter than the rest of the world’s climate scientists–which seems unlikely–or there are other scientists who also have evidence that global warming could be mostly natural, but have been hiding it. That is a serious charge, I know, but it is a conclusion that is difficult for me to avoid. (p. xxvii)" But as Arthur Smith pointed out, after addressing the problems with Spencer's model ... The first thing a true scientist should think of in a situation like this doesn't seem to have even occurred to Spencer. "What if I'm wrong?" He was.

Dessler paper press conference
In December 2010, Spencer held a press conference to criticize an article published in Science by Andrew Dessler of Texas A&M University, that indicated warming-induced changes in cloud cover would tend to create further warming ; and speculated on his blog, "I suspect – but have no proof of it – that Dessler was under pressure to get this paper published [before the Cancún climate summit ended)] to blunt the negative impact our work has had on the IPCC’s efforts."

Scott Mandia noted that Spencer's actions were highly irregular: "The professional response to rebut a scientific paper is to submit a paper that corrects any mistakes or at the very least to submit a letter to the publishing journal. It is completely inappropriate for a scientist to attempt to publicly sabotage a paper by issuing a press release or by holding a press conference about another colleague’s paper. " Dessler himself had held no press conference. .

And when asked about Spencer's suspicions, Science editor H. Jesse Smith said: “There was never a word about Cancún... Dessler never asked to get the paper expedited"... once peer review was complete, Smith says, the editors pushed to have it published in time for the annual fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) in San Francisco, California, which begins on Monday, 13 December. “I wanted to get it out before AGU.” "

Track record - satellite temperature data
Spencer and colleague John Christy "published a series of papers starting about 1990 that implied the troposphere was warming at a much slower rate than the surface temperature record and climate models indicated..."; but the discrepancy turned out to be an artifact of their having applied incorrect adjustments to their UAH satellite temperature record data. , . As Ray Pierrehumbert at RealClimate put it: "Spencer and Christy sat by for most of a decade allowing — indeed encouraging — the use of their data set as an icon for global warming skeptics. They committed serial errors in the data analysis, but insisted they were right and models and thermometers were wrong. They did little or nothing to root out possible sources of errors, and left it to others to clean up the mess, as has now been done "

Letter to Canadian Prime Minister
Roy Spencer was one of 60 'accredited experts' who in April 2006 wrote to Canadian Prime Minister  Stephen Harper denying climate change and urging inaction

Affiliations and connections
Spencer is closely associated with Dr John R. Christy who also works at the University of Alabama at Huntsville.

Tech Central Station column
Spencer has been a columnist for TCS Daily, writing over forty columns, almost entirely on the the topic of global warming. Until 2006, TCS Daily was run by DCI Group, a lobbying firm that works for ExxonMobil.

Heartland Institute speaker
Spencer was a speaker at the International Conference on Climate Change (2009) organized by the Heartland Institute think tank.

George C. Marshall Institute board member
Spencer is a board member of the George C. Marshall Institute At the George C. Marshall Institute roundtable in 2006 Spencer said "We are not saying that we don't believe that there can be significant global warming. As John [Christy] said, if you add CO2, something has to change. But things are changing all the time anyway. The big question is: So what? How much is it going to change, compared to other things? And what can you do about it?" As a Board Member of GMI, he knows the funding sources of the organization, which includes moneys from Exxon profits. GMI is a front group to which Exxon and others funnel corporate dollars to advance a corporate agenda. While Spencer's claims to receive no "corporate funding" may be technically true, since GMI is a non-profit that is funded by other non-profits set up by oil and gas companies to help launder their profits and advance their policy agenda, he devotes significant time aiding the agenda of such corporations. . There is no mention of his connection to the George C. Marshall Institute on the "About" page of his weblog.

Related SourceWatch articles

 * Global warming skeptics
 * Heartland Institute
 * Heartland Institute/International Conference on Climate Change (2009)
 * SourceWatch:Project:Creating Articles on Sponsors and Speakers at The 2008 International Conference on Climate Change
 * Tech Central Station
 * Encounter Books
 * DCI Group
 * John R. Christy
 * UAH satellite temperature record

External resources

 * Roy Spencer's website
 * George C. Marshall Institute, "Roy Spencer", accessed March 2007.
 * Goddard Space Flight Center, "Roy Spencer", accessed March 2007.
 * "Roy Spencer", accessed March 2007.
 * "FACTSHEET: Roy W. Spencer", Exxonsecrets.org, accessed March 2007.

Interviews with Spencer

 * James K. Glassman, "Hurricanes and Global Warming: Interview with Dr. Roy Spencer", Capitalism Magazine, September 14, 2005.

Articles by Spencer

 * Dr. John R. Christy and Roy Spencer, "Satellite Temperature Data," George C. Marshall Institute, April 17, 2006.
 * Roy Spencer, "Some Convergence of Global Warming Estimates," George C. Marshall Institute, August 11, 2005.
 * Roy Spencer, "Satellite Evidence for Global Warming Being Driven by the Pacific Decadal Oscillation", Presentation to the Heartland Institute's International Conference on Climate Change (2009), March 10, 2009. (PowerPoint)